The Economist - USA (2020-10-17)

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Leaders 9

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hefirststoriesfromXinjiangwerehardtobelieve.Surely
the Chinese government was not running a gulag for Mus-
lims? Surely Uyghurs were not being branded “extremists” and
locked up simply for praying in public or growing long beards?
Yet, as we report in this week’s China section, the evidence of a
campaign against the Uyghurs at home and abroad becomes
more shocking with each scouring of the satellite evidence, each
leak of official documents and each survivor’s pitiful account.
In 2018 the government pivoted from denying the camps’ ex-
istence to calling them “vocational education and training cen-
tres”—a kindly effort to help backward people gain marketable
skills. The world should instead heed Uyghur victims of China’s
coercive indoctrination. Month after month, inmates say, they
are drilled to renounce extremism and put their faith in “Xi Jin-
ping Thought” rather than the Koran. One told us that guards ask
prisoners if there is a God, and beat those who say there is. And
the camps are only part of a vast system of social control.
China’s 12m Uyghurs are a small, disaffected minority. Their
Turkic language is distant from Chinese. They are mostly Mus-
lim. A tiny handful have carried out terrorist attacks, including a
bombing in a market in 2014 that left 43 people dead. No terrorist
incidents have occurred since 2017: proof, the government says,
that tighter security and anti-extremism classes have made Xin-
jiang safe again. That is one way of putting it.
Another is that, rather than catching the violent
few, the government has in effect put all Uygh-
urs into an open-air prison. The aim appears to
be to crush the spirit of an entire people.
Even those outside the camps have to attend
indoctrination sessions. Any who fail to gush
about China’s president risk internment. Fam-
ilies must watch other families, and report sus-
picious behaviour. New evidence suggests that hundreds of
thousands of Uyghur children may have been separated from
one or both detained parents. Many of these temporary orphans
are in boarding schools, where they are punished for speaking
their own language. Party cadres, usually Han Chinese, are sta-
tioned in Uyghur homes, a policy known as “becoming kin”.
Rules against having too many children are strictly enforced
on Uyghur women; some are sterilised. Official data show that in
two prefectures the Uyghur birth rate fell by more than 60% from
2015 to 2018. Uyghur women are urged to marry Han Chinese
men and rewarded if they do with a flat, a job or even a relative
being spared the camps. Intimidation extends beyond China’s
borders. Because all contact with the outside world is deemed
suspect, Uyghurs abroad fear calling home lest they cause a
loved one to be arrested, as a harrowing report in 1843 , our sister
magazine, describes (http://economist.com/1843/uyghurs).
The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity:
it entails the forced transfer of people, the imprisonment of an
identifiable group and the disappearance of individuals. Sys-
tematically imposed by a government, it is the most extensive vi-
olation in the world today of the principle that individuals have a
right to liberty and dignity simply because they are people.
China’s ruling party has no truck with this concept of individ-


ualrights.Itclaimslegitimacyfromitsrecordofprovidingsta-
bility and economic growth to the many. Its appeal to the major-
ity may well command popular support. Accurate polling is all
but impossible in a dictatorship, and censorship insulates or-
dinary Chinese from the truth about their rulers. But many Chi-
nese people clearly do back their government, especially since to
object is deemed unpatriotic (see Chaguan). Awkward minor-
ities, such as Tibetans and Uyghurs, have no protection in such a
system. Unbound by notions of individual rights, the regime has
been determined to terrorise them into submission and force
them to assimilate into the dominant Han culture.
China lies at the extreme of a worrying trend. Globally, de-
mocracy and human rights are in retreat. Although this began
before covid-19, 80 countries have regressed since the pandemic
began and only Malawi has improved, says Freedom House, a
think-tank. Many people, when scared, yearn to be led to safety
by a strong ruler. The virus offers governments an excuse to seize
emergency powers and ban protests (see International section).
Abusive rulers often rally the majority against a minority. In-
dia’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, espouses an aggressive
Hindu nationalism and treats India’s Muslims as if they were not
really citizens. For this, he earns stellar approval ratings. So does
Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, who urges the murder of
criminal suspects. Hungary’s prime minister
crushes democratic institutions and says his
opponents are part of a Jewish plot. Brazil’s pres-
ident celebrates torture and claims that his for-
eign critics want to colonise the Amazon. In
Thailand the king is turning a constitutional
monarchy into an absolute one (see Briefing).
How can those who value liberty resist? Hu-
man rights are universal, but many associate
them with the West. So when the West’s reputation took a batter-
ing, after the financial crisis of 2007-08 and the botched war in
Iraq, respect for human rights did, too. Although America has
imposed targeted sanctions over the Uyghurs, the suspicion that
Western preaching was hypocritical has grown under Donald
Trump. A transactional president, he has argued that national
sovereignty should come first—and not only for America. That
suits China just fine. It is working in international forums to re-
define human rights as being about subsistence and develop-
ment, not individual dignity and freedom. This week, along with
Russia, it was elected to the unHuman Rights Council.

Start in Xinjiang
Resistance to the erosion of human rights should begin with the
Uyghurs. If liberals say nothing about today’s single worst viola-
tion outside a war zone, how can anyone believe their criticism
of other, lesser crimes? Activists should expose and document
abuse. Writers and artists can say why human dignity is pre-
cious. Companies can refuse to collude. There is talk of boy-
cotts—including, even, of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
Ultimately, governments will need to act. They should offer
asylum to Uyghurs and, like America, slap targeted sanctions on
abusive officials and ban goods made with forced Uyghur labour.

Torment of the Uyghurs


The persecution of Xinjiang’s Muslims is a crime against humanity. It is part of a worldwide attack on human rights

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